“I have to say,” I said over my plate, after we got served our meal at last, “I don’t understand your sudden aversion against burning people alive. You do it all the time, after all.”

“I feel a certain amount of kinship towards these women,” Beldrak shrugged. “I am a magic user, too, after all. Was I born in this hick town, I might very well stand in their place now.”

“What’s the deal with that?” asked Jim. “This world is brimming with magicians. No one ever tried to burn you, as far as I remember. Or me, for that matter. At least not on account of me being a spellcaster,” he finished sourly. We had an unfortunate incident just five days ago, where we had to explain to the patrons of a tavern rather forcefully that prodding tieflings with sharpened stakes in the name of “the greater good” was a very, very bad idea.

“Witches have their special kind of magic. They are well-versed in curses, namely. It’s really shady stuff, and I have no objection against burning alive those who use it. Problem is that a lot of witches and warlocks don’t use curses, precisely because that would be evil. And the ones who do use curses, are usually smart enough to have a cat’s-paw as a stand-in for themselves in case things go south.”

After finishing our lunch, we walked over to the guardhouse. The mayor and the watchmen were impatiently waiting for us.

“Gentlemen, you already now Sergeant Velario. This man is Captain Angheri, the commander of our watch, and this is Sergeant Morreio,” said Schultheiß. “He is also involved in this sad incident.”

“My children are,” grunted the man.

“Let me guess. Curses?” asked Beldrak.

“Curses,” confirmed the mayor, fiddling with his monocle. “On the children. It started a few tens ago. They became ill and weak. One of them even died.”

“And how are the detained women connected to the cases?”

“They are all very suspicious,” said Captain Angheri. “There is Elizabeth, who is known to make all kinds of potions. Mathilda is old, shuns the children, and publicly declared her hate for this town multiple times. Ysabel had come from a faraway city barely a year ago, and she’s known to consult strange people.”

“So much about being happy with foreigners,” I remarked.

“Her being from another city does make her a suspect though,” mused Jim. “I mean, if there was no such pandemic among the children before, it makes sense that her moving into the town has a connection with that.”

“Exactly,” said Sergeant Morreio forcefully, and gave a hard look to Schultheiß. The latter pretended not to notice it. He turned towards Jim instead.

“I am quite certain that Ysabel is innocent in this horrible affair. She is an upstanding and respectable member of our community. She would never turn towards the hellish practices that witches use, and she would never hurt the children. I suspect it was Mathilda. The old crone hates everyone in this town, she always did. And she especially loathes children.”

“We have three suspects,” Beldrak mused. “It is well past noon, and the sun sets early today. How many hours, Arnold?”

“Yesterday, it was shortly before the sixteenth hour,” I answered. Beldrak and Jim divided the day into twenty-four hours that were always of the same length. It took a lot of convincing on their part, but in the end, I admitted that theirs was a superior system for keeping time. In Italia, we divided the daylight into twelve hours, and the night into four watches, so these periods changed length depending on the season. “Today, a few minutes earlier. Right now, we are well into the fourteenth hour.” I was always good at keeping track of time. Better anyways than these “clocks” Jim tried to make nowadays.

“Not good,” said the wizard. “The children will be sent to bed early, especially the ones that are ill. We will have to speak to them first. Sergeant, I understand your children have been cursed as well?”

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“So they were.”

“We would like to speak with them, if possible. Lead the way.”

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The sergeant had a lovely little house that was probably a delightful and comfortable home usually. But given the severe illness of his daughters, the current atmosphere was that of doom and gloom.

As soon as we arrived, Beldrak cast his spell to see if we faced any magic, but our puzzlement only grew.

“I did sense a magical presence, but it was so fleeting that I might have just imagined it. On the other hand, there is no magic currently affecting the girls. They are just ill and weak.”

“In that case, Jim could cure them,” I suggested. “You might not know how to break curses, but healing has always been child-play to you.”

“It is worth a try,” the tiefling shrugged. “Let me see. Come little one. What is your name?”

“Marie,” the girl whispered.

“Marie, give me your hand, please.”

Jim worked his magic, and as I suspected, the pale cheeks of the girl suddenly flushed with blood and her enervate disposition was blown away.

“I…” she stuttered. “I feel better!”

“That’s good,” the tiefling said and gave a friendly clout on her head. “Now let me take a look at your sister. Anna, right?”

“Yes, but you should not call her Annie,” said Marie earnestly. “She doesn’t like that name. And I don’t like it either. I also don’t like clouts, so don’t give me a clout again!”

“You have been healthy for less than a minute, and you already act like a brat,” I sighed. “Just like my younger sister. Come here and let Master Jim work in peace.”

----------------------------------------

The parents were overjoyed with their newly healed children and proved to be very accommodating. The girls were similarly forthcoming, especially with Beldrak whom they probably thought to be less dangerous than Jim or me. Another proof that appearances can be deceptive.

All in all, we spent about one and half hour in Morreio’s home, and by the time we left, the sun was already about to set.

“We have established that the curse is only temporary,” summarised Beldrak. “But beyond that, there are still many possibilities.”

Indeed, there are.

The Morreios often kept one or two windows open for the night. That would give a perfect chance for a witch’s familiar to sneak in, feed on a child’s life force, then leave. Furthermore, as we found out, many children liked to play in the woods, and finally, all of them received toys from Ysabel. Also, as it turned out, the parents did not know about the origins of these toys.

“You see,” Anna explained to us, “Ms Ysabel is a really nice person. When she gave us this doll, she said that. Thing.”

“She said that she was a good person?” asked Beldrak.

“No!” answered Marie. “Anna, you are telling it wrong! She said that if you do a good thing, but tell about it everybody, then you only did that good thing to get praise. And she said she needs no praise because then it would be a bad deed.”

“No, you are telling it wrong!,” shot back her sister. “It doesn’t become a bad thing, just less good!”

“Anyways, Ms Ysabel is really nice. She even said she will get us another doll.”

“Because now we have one doll only. But there are two of us.”

“And Marie is older anyway, so she shouldn’t play that much with the doll. And Ms Ysabel gave it to me. So it is not really our doll, but mine.”

“No, you should not play that much! And because I am older, I should get to play with it more!”

They predictably got into each other’s hair about the doll, and I had to break up the fight with handing out both parties their well-deserved clout.

“Either she’s a fucking saint, or she is our witch,” said Jim now, as we were walking back to the guardhouse. “Ysabel, I mean.”

“The doll was not magical,” answered Trueanvil. “But something is definitely fishy about these playthings. Had the parents never asked their children about their new toys? Those little blabbermouths told everything to three complete strangers. Why wouldn’t they tell the same tale to their parents?”

“Even if the toys were the cause of the illness, Ysabel still might be a cat’s-paw,” I warned. “You were the one who highlighted that possibility. She might not have known what purpose these presents served.”

“Either way, it’s time we had a chat with our suspects,” Jim said.

“Yes! And we will do that good cop-bad cop division you told us about,” I answered enthusiastically.

“Arnold those are just stories from books and comics. I don’t think that works in real life.”

“We will see. But can you just hold on for a minute? I have to go in to speak with the carpenter before he closes.”

“What for?”

“One moment!” I shouted back as I disappeared into the shop.